The Company She Kept

by Marjorie Eccles

  Thomas gave a laugh, and this time it was one of pure pleasure. ‘Go by all means, but she won’t see you. She doesn’t see anyone. She lives alone with Jessie Crowther, her housekeeper, and if you can get past her, you’re a better man than I am. And if you do manage it, don’t rely on what she tells you. Half the time she’s OK but the other half she doesn’t know the time of day.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Trudging back along the edge of the field towards the big house, they walked in silence, trying to digest the implications of what they had just learned.

  The news that Kitty Wilbraham was still alive had knocked Mayo temporarily off-balance. He should not have assumed she was dead so easily, though granted, everything had pointed to it. But he had become so accustomed to thinking her dead and that her death constituted the motive for Angie Robinson’s murder that he was having trouble adjusting his thoughts, and his only answer when Abigail spoke to him was an abstracted grunt. Presently, it occurred to him that she had spoken. ‘Sorry, what was that you said?’

  ‘I was only saying I’d better check out with that college where he taught.’

  ‘Thomas? Yes, do that, Abigail. See what it was that caused him to leave – or be chucked out.’

  ‘Chucked out?’ She threw him a swift look. ‘What did he say to make you think that, sir? Something I missed?’

  ‘It wasn’t what he said, it’s what he didn’t say. He’s a damned sight too cagey for my liking, and too clever by half. All right, I don’t blame him, I’d do the same in his position. First principle of self-preservation: never volunteer information! But I had the feeling he was laughing up his sleeve, and that I neither like nor trust. He knows what all this is about, just as Sophie Lawrence and Dr Freeman do. They’re as tight as clams, but I’ll have it out of them before I’m finished, Abigail, by God I will!’ He was becoming more and more sure that the three of them were involved in some sort of conspiracy of silence. More than that: they were very likely taking him for a fool, though that didn’t greatly dismay him. Rather the opposite. That way one or other of them would sooner or later be bound to crack.

  They very soon came to a small gate let into the wall and passed through it into a dank courtyard where the sun could rarely have penetrated. The paving stones were mossy and slippery with algae, many of them cracked. Beyond the yard was a glimpse of disused stables and tumbledown outhouses.

  They banged hard on the back door, as advised, and waited. ‘Otherwise she’ll never hear you, she’s as deaf as a post,’ Thomas had warned. ‘And maybe won’t answer anyway, if she doesn’t choose to. They’re two for a pair, Jessie and Kitty, keep themselves bolted in like two old nuns in a convent, which is just as well, considering how isolated the house is. They won’t hear of having someone younger to live in and look after them. I keep a weather eye on them, though,’ he added laconically, ‘get their groceries in and so on.’

  Jessie Crowther must have been in a good mood. They were allowed to enter after she’d examined them through the kitchen window, heard them yell who they were through the letter-box and been told three times that Tommo had sent them. Minutes later, the door opened with a grinding of bolts, after which the old woman led them along a dark passageway, through a gloomy scullery and finally into an equally gloomy kitchen. But, having let them in, she resolutely refused to allow them to see Mrs Wilbraham. A crafty look crossed the weathered old face when she heard their request. ‘She’s too old to be bothered with all that,’ she said evasively. Jessie herself must have been in her early seventies if she was a day. ‘What’s he sent you here for then – Tommo?’

  The question was clearly a matter of form: there was an old black telephone on a shelf in the corner and Thomas, for all his alternative lifestyle, had possessed one, too.

  ‘Perhaps you’d better sit down, Miss Crowther,’ Mayo suggested. ‘This may take a bit of time.’

  ‘Mrs Crowther,’ she corrected sharply. A little round body of a north-countrywoman, there appeared to be little wrong with her physically, apart from her deafness, which didn’t seem to bother her unduly, now that she could watch their lips move with her sharp, bright-eyed stare.

  ‘Sit yourselves down, then. You’ll join me in my elevenses,’ she announced, in a tone brooking no argument. Waving them to seats at the table, she filled the electric kettle at a huge ceramic sink, chipped and stained with age and use, busying herself at the cupboards and presently slapping down on to the table three mugfuls of hot chocolate and three plates, each containing an awesome-sized piece of Yorkshire parkin.

  The kitchen was a cavernous place where enormous cupboards and a bulbous fridge of ancient vintage loomed, with dark corners where the heat from the Aga could never conceivably reach. And that was the reason, Mayo assumed, for the cosy corner which had been arranged as near as possible to the stove and the black iron fireplace, having on its hearth a two-bar electric fire. On a faded rug in front of it stood a couple of basket chairs, one occupied by a red cushion, a piece of knitting and a tortoiseshell cat. Most likely the rest of the house was shut off and unused. It smelt overpoweringly of damp, and perhaps mice. No wonder the cat looked so satisfied. Mayo looked speculatively at the second chair, wondering how much time the other occupant of the house spent here, if any – or whether, considering her great age, she spent most of her time in bed. Or even (which did not seem so improbable) if she were simply a ghost in everyone’s mind.

  ‘Help yourselves.’ Jessie Crowther sat herself down, waved to their plates. The unasked-for chocolate and sweet-stuff at this time in the morning was a novelty Mayo wasn’t sure he wanted but he followed Abigail’s example and got on with it, finding the hot drink surprisingly welcome. And was able to say with authority that the parkin was genuine: crunchy with oatmeal, sweet with black treacle and spicy with ginger.

  ‘Things you hear about nowadays!’ Mrs Crowther commented when she heard what they had to tell about Angie Robinson. ‘You never think it’ll happen to somebody you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry we’ve had to bring you such bad news.’

  ‘Oh well, as to that, can’t say as I knew her enough to be upset ... All right, is it?’ she asked Abigail, who had a hearty appetite but was finding some difficulty in disposing of such a substantial portion.

  ‘Very tasty, Mrs Crowther. Lovely.’

  ‘Like another piece? You look as though you could do with feeding up – you young women, thin as a match with the wood scraped off, and still not content!’

  Regretfully, Abigail smiled and shook her head, swallowed the last of the crumbs and slid her hand inside her shoulder-bag for her pocketbook. ‘Delicious, but I couldn’t eat another morsel.’

  ‘Suit yourself, I know somebody who’ll finish it up. Always had a sweet tooth and very partial to my parkin, she is.’

  Mayo brought the conversation back to where they’d left off. ‘Did Miss Robinson visit here often, Mrs Crowther?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that, just sometimes, with the doctor. Even though Kitty didn’t really care for her. Couldn’t be doing with her myself. She must’ve been thick-skinned, for she used to come, all the same, invited or not, and Kitty would never turn anybody away. Liberty Hall here it was, in them days.’ There was going to be no stopping her, once her memories had been released. ‘Oh, Flowerdew was different then,’ she went on, ‘you should’ve seen it – should’ve seen Kitty! She was old then, mind, but lively. It set her up, having all them youngsters around her. It’s never having had children of her own, I reckon.’

  ‘Can you remember the exact date when Mrs Wilbraham went back to Tunisia?’ Mayo asked. ‘And why d’you think she did?’

  There was a pause while Mrs Crowther did some calculating. ‘1979. Middle of August,’ she said eventually. ‘And why? I don’t know, but I expect she felt she’d been away too long. It had a kind of pull, d’you see? That was her life, really, it was what she loved, what’d made her and her husband famous. I do know she had some daft idea about being near him, she’s n
ever really got over him dying out there. It’s forever Alfred this, Alfred that.’

  ‘What brought her back here, then?’

  ‘Better medical care, for one thing, her arthritis gets no better. I was glad to get back here, I can tell you! I used to wonder sometimes what we were doing out there. Too hot for one thing, and all that funny food – and the flies!’

  ‘Nowhere like home, is there, Mrs Crowther? But before you went away ... was there anyone else besides yourself and Mrs Wilbraham living in the house? Can you remember?’

  "Course I can. Nothing wrong with my memory when it comes to folks – and there’s been some right funniosities here from time to time, I can tell you!’ Giving him a sideways glance, she added, ‘That Irena, for one.’

  ‘Irena? Who was she?’

  ‘Bron, that was her name, Irena Bron. Czech, she was. I’d have checked her!’ She chuckled grimly at what was obviously an old joke. ‘Moody. And talk about a temper! Once threw a box of eggs from one end of my kitchen to t’other. Something I’d said upset her, about them nasty foreign sausages she used to cook, and dumplings I’d have been ashamed to give to the cat!’

  Irena Bron. Yet another name to add to the growing list. Another who had been present that night when the spirits were conjured up? ‘Tell me what you knew about her, Mrs Crowther, about Irena Bron,’ Mayo asked, and knew it was a question she’d been waiting for by the readiness of her answer.

  ‘Well, she wasn’t as young as the rest of them, that’s for sure. She’d never see thirty-five again, nearer forty, if you ask me. Dark, had a moustache. Some of these foreign women do, you know. Her father had worked before the war with Kitty and Dr Wilbraham – he was Kitty’s husband that died – and when he died, this Bron chap, Irena came here and Kitty took her in out of the goodness of her heart. Wished she hadn’t many a time, I dare say, for she was nothing but trouble, what with that nasty temper of hers and all.’

  ‘What happened to her?’

  ‘Went to work down south and good riddance!’

  ‘When did she leave?’

  But at this point Mrs Crowther’s deafness suddenly began to trouble her again. She didn’t answer, busy gathering together the plates and mugs.

  The light was switched on in the kitchen, though the central pendant with its single harsh bulb didn’t achieve much in the way of illumination, except to throw the old woman’s face into shadow as she moved from table to sink. Mayo thought she was older even than he’d thought, possibly nearer eighty than seventy, and he felt a reluctance to press her to remember things possibly painful to her. Then she turned round and smiled, and he knew that, in a way, she was welcoming his questions. Indeed, he was ready to hazard a guess that Jessie had probably never known for sure exactly what had happened, though maybe she had suspected, and would dearly like to have her suspicions confirmed now and her curiosity at last satisfied.

  ‘Who else used to visit about that time?’ asked Abigail, pencil poised above the still almost blank page.

  There’d been Sophie Amhurst, who came every day to work for Kitty, and Dr Freeman, who came three times a week regular as clockwork, and sometimes more on a social visit, bringing Angie, her shadow, with her. And that young lad that lived here for a while. Felix whatsisname?’

  ‘Darbell?’

  ‘That’s it! Can’t tell you much about him, mind. You want to ask Tommo, he used to help him in the garden.’ Her face softened as she spoke the man’s name. ‘Tommo would know more about him.’

  I’m damn sure he would, thought Mayo. And about Irena Bron. But whether he’d tell what he knew was another matter. He pushed his chair back and stood up. ‘Thanks for the hot chocolate, Mrs Crowther, very welcome, and the parkin. It’s a long time since I had any as good as that. You’ve as light a hand at baking as my mother, and that’s saying something.’

  The old woman was delighted. ‘Bless you, I could make it with my eyes shut! Would you like the recipe? It’s no trouble.’ Reluctant to admit them at first, she was now unwilling to let go of her unexpected visitors.

  ‘Save it for the next time we come, Mrs Crowther, I’d be delighted to have it,’ Abigail replied, earning herself a beaming smile. Seemingly, Jessie accepted that there would be a next time without the idea bothering her.

  ‘You can go out by the front door,’ she said, when at last she ran out of excuses to detain them. ‘Save you going all the way round the back. I’ll come down to the gate with you and open it.’

  Donning a large woven cloak-like garment reminiscent of a Berber rug, she hooked down a key from behind the door and motioned them to follow.

  A baize-lined door with the baize hanging off it led at the end of a corridor into the hall, panelled in time-darkened oak, with a magnificent, though badly flaking, plaster ceiling. A wide, dog-leg staircase with carved newel-posts led upwards into impenetrable shadow. On the staircase walls gloomy ancestors gave each other unfriendly stares. The fungoid smell was even more pervasive here, with even stronger overtones of mice. A slight film of moisture overlaid the flagstones: there was unlikely to be a damp course and the deep wainscots were probably full of wet or dry rot. It was dismayingly cold.

  All the charm of this house, Mayo decided as they came thankfully out into the clean, cold air, resided in its exterior.

  As Jessie Crowther pulled the heavy door to behind them, Mayo stood looking at the lake. With its sapling-crowned island in the centre, banked by willows now dipping golden wands to the water, it ran almost up to the foundations of the house, with only a narrow flagged path separating the two. It was full of rank weeds, muddy and swollen, no doubt, from the recent heavy rains. The old boathouse at the far end seemed to be in total disrepair.

  He remarked on the stuccoed extension tacked on to the end of the house, inquiring as to its function.

  ‘Oh, that’s just Kitty’s old workroom, full of old junk.’

  Mrs Crowther pulled her cloak closer round her and toddled off down the drive at a brisk pace, leaving them to follow.

  ‘I’ve just thought on,’ she said unexpectedly after she had unlocked the almost seized-up iron gates, allowing them to be pushed open enough to squeeze through. ‘It’s always been in my mind how funny it was, the way Kitty upped and left here, just as soon as she’d got rid of that Irena. You’d have thought she’d have been thankful to stay here nice and quiet without her, wouldn’t you? But no, the day after she’d gone she says to me, “Jessie, it’s time to go back,” and within a week there we were in Tunis.’ Her bright eyes were fixed unwaveringly on Mayo’s face as she spoke. ‘Come again, when I’ve had time for another think. I might have remembered a bit more.’

  What she remembered would depend on Kitty, her mistress, that was what she meant.

  And Mayo said sternly that yes, they’d be back.

  And what he meant was that it wouldn’t be long before they were, and the next time it would be Kitty Wilbraham they’d see. He was beginning to feel that only then would he be able to accept the fact that she really was alive. Only this time, he’d come with another murder victim in mind. For if Kitty Wilbraham hadn’t been killed, who had, other than Irena Bron? Unless they happened to discover that she too, like Kitty, was still alive.

  ‘It would fit,’ Abigail said, ‘depending on how you read the last part of that letter. “She would not have died if she had stayed away from England” doesn’t necessarily mean if Mrs Wilbraham had stayed in Tunisia. It could mean if Irena Bron had never left Czechoslovakia.’

  ‘It could,’ said Mayo.

  CHAPTER 15

  ‘I don’t mind having lies told to me, Abigail – well, not much, it’s what I expect – but what I do object to is when they expect me to believe ’em.’

  Abigail made sympathetic noises, though the predictability of the Great British Public’s willingness to think that anyone who joined the police force was so thick they were asking to be lied to was almost monotonous.

  Madeleine Freeman, when questioned again on the s
ubject of the evening at Flowerdew, had coolly asserted that she’d completely forgotten that the woman Irena Bron had also been there the night they tried the table-tapping. She couldn’t remember which firm in the City she had gone to work for.

  Sophie Lawrence in her turn admitted that she hadn’t wanted to talk about the evening at all, simply because it had seemed so childish and stupid in retrospect. Grownups, you know, behaving like schoolchildren.

  Thomas, when pressed, also reluctantly admitted to being present, at least for part of the time. He’d walked out before they even started the bloody game, he said, and he was the only one Mayo believed to be telling the truth, on that point at any rate. As to the rest of it, he looked on the whole thing with a very jaundiced eye. ‘They’re all lying their heads off, for some reason I haven’t yet discovered – but don’t let them think they can keep that up for ever! One of them will crack, sooner or later.’

  Felix Darbell? None of them admitted to knowing what Felix had been doing with the rest of his life.

  And then at last Dr Freeman had found her memory sufficiently revived to recall the name of the firm that Irena Bron had gone to work for in the City – which turned out to have gone into liquidation years ago. What, he wondered, had made her change her mind? It was a question which irritated him, like a piece of grit in an oyster shell, but producing no pearls.

  The job of tracing the erstwhile company secretary fell to Farrar, who was happy to throw himself into it and who soon came up with the news that the secretary was an old fellow, now retired and living with his daughter near Warwick. ‘Handy,’ Mayo said. ‘Get yourself over there, Keith, and see what you can learn from the old chap, if he’s not too far gone to remember.’

  But Norman Kington was very much in the here and now. He’d taken early retirement when his firm went bust and was even now only just on seventy, a sprightly, soldierly type possessing all his faculties, including an excellent memory, a taste for malt whisky and a willingness to share it. Farrar, alarmed by the size of the first slug he poured, reluctantly declined one for himself and confined his acceptance of refreshment to a cup of coffee made by Kington’s daughter, while Kington himself told him that he remembered Irena Bron very clearly: first because she’d been the best candidate by far for the job and secondly because she’d never turned up for it.